Interview Elias Carayannis


Anja Seipenbusch-Hufschmied: Could you tell me something about the ARIS project?
 
Elias G. Carayannis: This has been a great experience and a wonderful opportunity to look in a systematic and substantive way into issues that are at the interface of art, economy and society – and particularly creative economy and society. Our work together has grown into a book series that we are publishing with Springer under the title Arts, Research, Innovation and Society. The co-editors of the series are Rector Gerald Bast and myself, and also David Campbell.

The discussions and interactions leading up to the publishing project resulted from my introduction to Dr. Bast by Dr. Campbell, which took place in October 2012. I had been working with Dr. Campbell for the last ten years or so on a number of different projects. At the time Dr. Bast was already interested in producing and publishing a series of books about arts.

I had already edited several book series, scientific journals and also an encyclopedia bringing together issues of creativity, invention, innovation and entrepreneurship as well as science, technology and economic development. Some of them were done with Springer, but also with other publishers, such as Palgrave Macmillan, Edward Elgar and others. Dr. Campbell, as a result of our prior work together, thought it would be a good idea to introduce us and propose that we collaborate and explore whether we could co-edit a series.

Of course I became interested immediately, and we started interacting to develop a proper thematic focus, a title and the ingredients, if you will, the conceptual and intellectual footprint of the series. We experimented with different names, and one which I proposed – because I also find it phonetically appealing – was ARIS: it brings together and connects arts with society, but also, at the heart of it, with research and innovation. So if you look at this, it actually could be arts and society connected through research and innovation.

These are not the only links, but we are interested in exploring the relationship of arts to society, and the role and presence of arts in society with regard to possible current and emerging views and trends on research and innovation. And that brings us right back to the issue of knowledge and creative economy and society: it is very important whether we look at this from the perspective of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, or in a more pure sense, trying to understand the nature and dynamics of the arts, and fields related to the arts today.

One might even look at the role – and the nature and dynamics – of the political regime within which arts, research, innovation and society exist, operate and evolve. These issues are reflected in the questions that define what the book series is about, and the call for contributions to the ARIS project – once again, the acronym stands for Arts, Research, Innovation and Society – includes questions like: Could and should artists be researchers? How are the systems of the arts and sciences connected or disconnected? What is the position and status of the arts in defining the terms progress and development?
 
ASH: Could you describe the main themes that will be addressed in the first book?
 
EGC: The inaugural volume will have contributions from a number of people, both academics and practitioners. This has always been our focus and our interest: an approach that integrates multiple viewpoints. In particular, it reflects a concept that we developed with Dr. Campbell a few years ago, which we call the Quadruple Helix Innovation Model.

This model is oriented toward bringing together and linking government, university and industry, both through top-down policies and bottom-up initiatives growing out of civil society. The idea is that policies should be further fine-tuned, shaped and evolved – in fact made more intelligent and effective – by civil-society-based actions and interactions with government, university and industry. 

Within this context, we will try to include contributing authors from all four areas, if possible. In this first book we have university contributors, including the Angewandte (The Vienna University of Applied Arts), but also people who are working with the United Nations Development Program and the Inter-American Development Bank. Among the other participating universities are Columbia University and Tsinghua University in China. The books' themes are the essential ingredients and elements of ARIS: What insights arise from observing the dynamics, interactions and results of arts from a research and innovation point of view?
What potential implications for sustainable development are reflected by the presence and influence of arts in the context of society and economy? What are the possibilities and implications – and also challenges and opportunities – for public-private partnerships, and for what I would like to call public-private-social partnerships (reflecting again the quadruple helix view)? Additionally, what are the nature, dynamics and implications of form, function, aesthetics and ethics for arts in the context of social and economic trends and developments?

Related to this are issues that involve, as I mentioned before, the nature of political regimes – quality-of-democracy issues and the related challenges, opportunities and implications. Should we expect that a creative, knowledge-based and -driven society and economy would be more likely to thrive and prosper in the context of a more open democratic and dynamic environment? Or does the control – and potentially the structure – imposed or provided by more autocratic regimes actually in some way have a benign influence on the arts, or is it purely a malignant influence?

We are trying to be agnostic in this so that we don't presume and assume from the beginning that democracy is a prerequisite for the arts to thrive, and for economic and social development and progress. Clearly we do assume and expect that this will be shown to be the case. But we try to explore that frontier, and I think this is an important issue for many modern economies and societies: whether and how both the arts and the nature of the political regime (i.e. democracy) are not only a catalyst, but also triggers and accelerators for higher quality, and for quantity growth as well.

That is, I think, an important consideration for Europe, for the European project. The European way of life is under significant pressure; it has been confronted, as we know, by challenges for several years now. This is not unrelated, and it should not be a matter of indifference to people in the arts. In fact it should be quite the opposite, because many insights and solutions may emerge from arts and from a creative context, answers to the question of how to best address the current crisis, and also of how to anticipate, understand and even preempt or prevent future crises. The implicit premise here is that fiscal and monetary policies are not the only ingredients for a truly sustainable solution. The creative elements, and arts in particular, have an important role to play in influencing and shaping how people think, behave and act.
 
ASH: What is your personal vision for the project?
 
EGC: Arts are very fundamental; basically they are the essence of humanity. Arts are the manifestation of creativity. We as humans truly become creators, we become poets. The word poet is derived from the Greek language, where it is used in different ways, meaning creator, which can have religious or supernatural connotations. It also means a person who writes poems.

It is no accident that the word is the same for those who write poems and for those who create, and thus artists are poets. The question, challenge and opportunity for our developed economies and societies, so that they can continue to develop and progress, is how we can make as many people as possible – and hopefully all people in their own context – more poetic.

This is about truly exploring and pursuing poetry in life and in action. ARIS is about linking arts and bringing arts into the lives and the experience of as many people as possible, in a way that is more substantive, and is as inclusive and all-encompassing as possible. A rich society without arts is perhaps the poorest one that you can imagine. Many poor societies that have artistic and poetic richness may well prove to be more sustainable.

Currently there is a challenge, there is a threat of a separation, an abolition of poetry from our lives, because of the economic crisis, and because of the fear, greed and short-sightedness that often emerge and prevail in times of crisis. That would be a very sad thing if it were to happen, and thus this is a manifesto for reintroducing poetry into our lives, for enriching them with more poetry, for bringing more art – more artistic being and becoming – into our lives.